Guild Wars 2

The gear for sale at the new NPC in HoTM is for PvP; PvP skins.

Someone should use their dragon token with a consumable token, orb, and a powder to make a dragon finisher and post it.

Hambow Warriors will still roll Elementalists who can’t dodge/kite and/or who don’t have burst large enough to kill. And the build will still be extremely forgiving with too much reward.

Condition Mesmers are going to be worse than before since now they have a passive heal to add to their Prismatic Understanding + torch cheese. Ones who aren’t using offhand staff with scepter/torch are still going to roll Diamond Skin Elementalists because they get a bit of direct damage via offhand sword/pistol/gs phantasms.

Condition Necro is seeing some minor nerfs; nothing that will make too much of a difference. It’ll still be entertaining to watch them get rolled by Diamond Skin, though.

Spirit rangers will now have another spirit added to their kitten nal, because what we needed from this build was not only more passive play, but more clutter as well. Good job, aNet.

Condition Warriors can actually do a bit of direct damage via Arcing Arrow still, amongst other things (varies depending on weaponset). I have a feeling that a good diamond skin Elementalist will just make this fight one of those boring, neverending stalemates.

I’m honestly a bit disappointed in the sword 2 nerf, especially after the decrease in the population of S/D Thieves from the Larcenous Strike nerf. This weaponset may go extinct now, and S/P might as well.

Lol @ permastealth in conquest in general; this applies to Thieves but also to an extent the Mesmers who decide to bring Veil, Decoy, offhand torch, and Mass Invis. Cheese like this should never have existed in the first place. Mesmers will get more annoying, though.

I honestly didn’t find three kit Engineers to be that cheesy.

Zanryu.3417:

I don’t believe Dark Pact and Pindown to be a valid observation. One is a ranged skill, the other is a medium range skill. One is on a longbow, the other on a dagger. The dagger is a weapon meant for close range combat, the role of Dark Pact isn’t necessarily to chase someone, but to keep them in place. You get close, immobilize your target, and launch your assault (knowing you, with minions). It allows you to get off a fair amount of attacks assuming they don’t break the immobilize.

Pindown, however, is a ranged skill meant to keep the person in place and allow the Warrior to catch up and continue their attacks. It’s meant to be used as a way of preventing escape, and it’s very successful at it when used correctly.

Both skills are on very different weapons with different niches, it doesn’t seem to me as if their niche should be virtually the same given the differences between both the classes and the weapons they’re available on.

So you’re telling me that Pin Down can’t be used from close range to keep someone in place and allow a Warrior to initiate more offense, and that Dark Pact can’t be used to prevent escape?

Lol.

He’s saying that the radius circle is smaller than the actual radius of the explosion; i.e you can be hit by the explosion while standing outside of the graphic circle.

Oh. Now that I look, we can see devs. Thought for sure I searched it thoroughly the first time.. I should’ve just checked GWshack.

After just running into Powerrr in solo queue, I thought about it. It’d be kinda interesting to see where they would stand.

Also, is it me or did the reset not go through correctly?

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Necromancer
Putrid Mark: Changed the description to match the actual functionality of this skill.
Marks: Fixed an issue that caused staff marks to go on full cooldown when aborted/interrupted.
Shadow Fiend—Haunt: Updated the blind skill fact to display the proper duration.

Wow, they actually fixed this.

I’ll sign up for Fresh Air burst. My Ele’s name is Isabelle Wilder (and is my main); lately been learning a different class so I’ll probably be on Claire Wilder.

Why not reset it to the date when the change was made? (The 12th or something, iirc.) A lot of people, myself included, came back to tournaments more actively after hearing the leaderboard improvement was made a few weeks ago.

PU condi mesmer with scepter/torch is one of the best and cheesiest 1v1 builds in the game currently while still having team support, and you want to improve it?

I think the rate of condition application is fine right now.

That Infusion of Shadow nerf is going to be so much fun. SR disengages will still exist, as well as shadowstep+infil arrow, but tbh it’s gotten to the point where I find that watching thieves disengage repeatedly is more funny than annoying. I rarely respond to it outside of typing “lol” in chat after I stop one of their disengage attempts and kill them anyway.

If you feel like you’ve expended cooldowns that leave you vulnerable enough to let them kill you when they come back from a disengage, then just continue to run in one direction until said cooldowns are restored.

Otherwise, just sit back and nom on some popcorn or have a good chuckle while you watch them struggle until they finally die.

Fury of Balthazar.2694:

Snip

I believe this suggestion has been brought up multiple times without response, but I do think that it’d be extremely helpful.

Why are these the only skills in the game that go on full cooldown consistently upon interruption?

And why is the lich form transformation so glitchy with its cooldown in regards to interruption?

Dodge interrupts apply to both of these.

I can understand making it so that we don’t completely absorb damage when the hit consumes the rest of our life force; i.e tanking 9k backstabs with 1.8k life force and taking 0 damage to our actual health pool.

However, the way it is currently doesn’t make sense. If I have 8999 life force and take a 9k backstab while in death shroud, why does it take all of my remaining life force AND do 9k damage from my health pool?

They went from one extreme to the other; the remaining damage should spill over. 2.5k life force and taking 5k damage should consume the remaining 2.5k life force and then 2.5k health.

But that’s only if they’re not willing to revert it back to what it was.

Even if you can dodge hammer (outside of hammer 4 which is too fast atm), you get two dodges every 20 seconds. Whereas, in the first 20 seconds, a hammer warrior gets two earthshakers, one knockdown and one knockback. And that’s barring Merciless Hammer.

But I still agree with you; hammer itself isn’t really a problem right now. Especially in 1v1 situations where you can clearly see what the warrior is doing.

..The justification for the multiple Mesmer icons seems a bit silly, imo. First off, now we can’t tell whether there are one, two, three/etc mesmers at a given point on the map provided there is more than one on the enemy team. I’ve already had to open up the match menu to recheck the opposing team’s roster just to know whether it was one mesmer or multiple mesmers.

Secondly, the amount of time it takes to “find the real mesmer” without the minimap is extremely short. The deception portion of the class isn’t much of deception, it’s, “Here; have fun trying to click or alt-tab target me through AI spam.” That only applies to a few builds anyway; a lot of mesmers don’t spawn enough clones to even come close to decieving anyone.
The point is that that targeting difficulty remains whether you know where the real mesmer is or not via looking at the minimap. Even if there was one icon for the mesmer on the minimap showing, meaning I knew he was somewhere in my line of sight, I’d still have to click/tab through the clones just to target it.

Let’s not forget to mention that the icons on the minimap are so large that a mesmer will rarely be so far away from their clones that you’ll be able to discern them by slight minimap positions.. Especially fighting on a point.

The pros vs cons for this are just too one-sided.

If you can’t dodge a skill with an extremely obvious animation and a 1.5 second cast time, as well as a very distinguished and audible sound tell, then the problem is not that Elementalists are OP.

Elementalists have more burst than thieves, more AoE boon sharing (elemental attunement/etc.), less mobility, less survivability. Less team utility in general, though.

Mesmers have more burst than thieves (mind wrack blurred frenzy hits 2x harder than backstab+mug if we’re talking burst thief vs shatter mesmer). Less mobility, less team utility, less survivability.

I think thieves bring more to the table overall via blind fields/AoE stealth/mobility/boon stripping (although mesmers can boon strip). I suppose you could call them the apex predator by that standard, but burst Mesmer and burst Elementalist both have their merits.

Also, no real changes are being done to the common burst Elementalist specs. They may move two of our most important traits in the Arcana line from Adept to Master, which would actually be quite a nerf. If they only move one, however, then you won’t notice much of a difference.

If they do them in white, they should add black ones as well. Same model, just dark wings. 8D

But I’d be perfectly satisfied with an Angel Wings skin.

It seems like a bug; it’s not consistent.

Started with Elementalist. S/D Zerker Fresh Air Burst. Picked up D/P Zerker 10/30/0/0/30 Thief on the side about two months later. Played it until I felt I learned it pretty well, but went back to primary Elementalist.

Now I’m learning Dagger/Warhorn Zerker Death Shroud Necro. Will probably go back to Ele when I’m done learning this.

The only thing to really complain about with Engis would be the nearly impossible to interrupt healing turret, but Guardian Shelter and Thief Withdraw are also difficult/impossible to interrupt, so it’s fine.

ronpierce.2760:

You’re acting like these bone minions are juggernauts xD They explode for 2k, thieves/warriors/burst eles are all way more deadly. I think you’re being a little silly. Are they annoying because of unblockable? Sure. I don’t often exlode them anyways when people are blocking because I prefer to use them in a burst CC-chain combo. Doesn’t effect me much. But are they OP? Not even close… They don’t hit that kitten hard and don’t scale with crit/power.

The burst from Ele/Thief are a lot more deadly when they’re playing burst builds. As in 15-14k HP with <1000 toughness burst builds. Elementalists don’t even have any active defenses if they’re running burst (outside of dodge).

You can’t compare that to an MM who has absurd survivability, constant passive (even while CC’d) and RANGED damage from AI, and a large amount of body block material to play with. Heck, this is without the necro doing anything itself.

The build is easier to deal with if you’re somewhat tanky with a large amount of AoE. If you’re glass though, it’s hell to deal with even a braindead MM. A lot of glass classes rely on CC as part of their damage mitigation in addition to burst setup, and MM partially negates that with no effort involved.

The build may require a bit to use the AI actives well, but the fact is that a monkey could win a lot of fights on a point with an MM just due to the fact that their only real weakness outside of teamfight AoEs is lack of mobility and AI kiting, but you can’t exploit that often in conquest.

Let’s not forget that if their minions aren’t dead, they win EVERY downed state fight.

It’s one of those cheesy builds that’s actually very strong, but only is kept out of the meta by the nature of teamfights. Kinda like PU offhand torch mesmer and its disability to contest points.

Evasive Arcana is the only reason I go into Arcana anymore. I’ve tried 20/30/10/0/10 S/D and it honestly wasn’t that bad, but Evasive Arcana is really influential. Imo, in most cases going without investing 30 into arcana for it is a worse idea than not.

I know that aNet is trying to avoid power creep, but would making Evasive Arcana a class mechanic and giving us something in place of it as an Arcana GM trait break the class?

Lingering elements fixed?

Fixed as in, it’ll work with Evasive Arcana too? 8D

…What if you did this with two mesmers?

One mesmer reflects the other mesmer’s auto attacks after already making max clones. Do this by using Mirror (healing) and Feedback. Then shatter and see if it shatters all 98234923746 or if it only lets you shatter the maximum clone number.

Arcane Lightning increases Critical Damage by 5%, not 10%.

And Pyromancer’s Puissance should instead read, “You are granted one stack of might for each spell you hit while in fire attunement.”

Littlefeather.8623:

Personaly I would love 1v1 Tourney’s, it would really narrow down skill and technique. Something the current boards and rankings dont really tell about, its one thing to have a really good 1v1 fight between two different players which purely relies on skill. Over fighting 1v1 than some other numbers come in and start helping or hindering, this takes away the actual skill that most players need to get better. If there was a 1v1 Tourney mode, I would never have a reason to do Solo Que again, by all means yall can have the zerging and doubelteaming. I would be completly satisfied by knowing how good or bad I am without help or hinderence.

Honestly, you’d probably find 1v1 less balanced/skill-related than you would 5v5 conquest play at times, considering that this game mode isn’t balanced for 1v1. There are some builds on certain classes which are extremely strong 1v1, but aren’t popular/are kept out of the meta because they’re much less useful in teamfights/node capping.

If a 1v1 mode is added, PU Condi Mesmers will be the new meta.

Dee Jay.2460:

be honest here, that balance change is an extremely “inelegant” way of adressing a balance issue that is no longer relevant. So can we have it reverted please?

If aNet was willing to revert changes that were obvious mistakes, then Elementalist wouldn’t be in its current state.

I would say that Warrior wouldn’t either, but that problem rose rather recently.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Lopez.7369:

Errant Venture.9371:

Simple, change Cleansing Ire to require a hit + depleted adrenaline to remove conditions. If you miss with your burst you get depleted adrenaline + no condi clear. Sucks for bad players but that’s what you get for not making sure your target is locked down before you burst them. It wouldn’t even be a huge nerf, you can still charge adrenaline while Bursts are on recharge and 3 condis cleared every 8s is already a MUCH higher rate of condi clear than any other class can achieve.

I’d be fine with that.

yeah..never mind Hammer burst can randomly fire you in any direction and then rubber band you. Never mind that flurry over shots it mark, great sword is extremely prone to skill lag, evis is terrain sensitive and moves via flight of the crow..if your not good enough to lock them down on flat ground, without much going on round you on a low population map with an excellent ping..you deserve to miss and lose your adrenaline. Good thinking. We’ll add this one to if thieve’s get blocked in stealth they lose all initiative and if mesmer clones don’t shatter dead on, all their shatters go on recharge.

Your counterexamples make no sense. If you dodge a Mesmer’s shatter, it goes on recharge and their clones are still used. If a Thief uses a skill from stealth that gets blocked, it still takes the initiative; it just leaves them in stealth (which imo should be changed).

If you dodge a Warrior’s burst skill.. They keep all of the bonuses that they get from having full adrenaline (Adrenal Health; Heightened Focus), and the skill goes on a very short cooldown (ten seconds).

You don’t see how this promotes the play requiring no skill that was see from a lot of Warriors today?

Healing signet is countered by burst, but guess what? With the amount of stuns Warriors have access to, it’s still easier for them to drop the GC than it is for the GC to drop them in most cases.

We all agree that passive play is what’s killing this game, and yet when aNet decided to buff Warrior sustain, they buffed their PASSIVE heal. Now, at 0 healing power, healing signet outheals both mending and healing surge by a LANDSLIDE while still requiring no risk from the player, and being much harder to counter. That’s what’s contributing to the braindead state that the class is in.

Nerf healing signet significantly; it should be noticeably worse than its active counterparts due to being harder to counter and easier to use.

Buff Mending, and buff healing surge so that when used well, they’re obviously better options.

Finally, make the change that we’ve been talking about for MONTHS and have warriors consume adrenaline on miss/evade/etc. Right now there is NO punishment for using burst skills (which happen to be the stuns we complain about for two of their weapons) at times when it’s clearly wrong to do so. There’s nearly no reward for dodging a warrior’s burst skill when it’ll be off cooldown shortly after.

And for those of you who say, “Oh but this will be worse because they’ll just cleanse more conditions via cleansing ire,” why should Cleansing Ire active on a burst skill miss?

I don’t disagree that Warriors needed buffs, but buffing passives to the point of making a class braindead easy via few risks and many rewards is NOT the way to buff a class.

Thief Basilisk, unless they’re using offhand pistol which gives them access to headshot.

And Elementalist. With offhand dagger they have two CCs, both on 40 second cooldowns , and both important for setting up burst. With offhand focus, they have one CC on a 50 second cooldown that’s necessary to set up their burst.

Like I said, even if those weren’t valid cases (and they are), it still isn’t healthy. CC does play an important role in this game.

On the same note, Automated Response should have an icon as well; optimally one that stays on at all times (even when it’s not active). This allows players to better plan their counters to passive play.

Not every class has access to low risk, easy to land CC. Even if every class did, that wouldn’t make it okay. Imagine if stability had no icon or any visual queue to go with it.

Elementalist elites.

..

That is all.

Besides the fact that passive immunity to CC is pretty BS; who thought it was a good idea for this trait NOT to have an icon? There’s no way to tell when a Ranger has Shared Anguish up or not.

What do you guys consider to be the top/low tier classes/builds at this point? Consider their efficiency overall and/or at the roll they play. And on the other hand, which classes/builds have the highest or lowest skill ceiling or floor respectively (ease of play)?

I haven’t played every class enough to give an accurate answer to both of these, but I’ll make something just for the purpose of starting the thread.

These are from best/most at top to worst/least at bottom.

Tier List

Warrior (Hammer + Longbow, Mace/Sword + Longbow Condi, Mace/Shield + Greatsword)

Necromancer (Staff + Scepter/Dagger Condi)

Ranger (Spirit)

Engineer (HGH)

Guardian (Staff + Hammer Bunker, DPS Greatsword + Scepter or Sword/Focus)

Thief (Most weapons/builds are viable outside of P/P imo)

Mesmer (Greatsword + Sword/Pistol Shatter) [Staff + Scepter/Torch PU Condi doesn’t belong in competitive play imo]

Elementalist (Staff, S/D Burst, S/F Burst, D/D Bunker)

Aaaaaandd..

Skill Floor/Ceiling List (Same builds as previous list)

Engineer

Elementalist

Thief

Guardian

Mesmer

Necro

Ranger

Warrior

I guess the point of the thread is to get a feel for the community’s opinion on balance in terms of risk/reward. It’s a shame to feel like the most rewarding classes/builds are the ones that are easiest to learn and/or play. I can understand in a sense why many of the professional teams have left; it just doesn’t really feel worth it to invest time into becoming competitive anymore.

I’m not attempting to bring more “doom and gloom”; if anything was to come from this thread I’d like to encourage aNet developers to not only focus on making classes on par with each other when you balance them, but to also keep in mind the risk/reward factor when balancing as well. I know it’s definitely not an easy job, but I and a lot of other players still retain hope that the general dilemma can be fixed.

Holler.7053:

mms is they don’t even really have to attack me if I’m playing ele or mesmer because the pets can kill me before I can make it through death shroud and their health bar.

Making the game newb friendly doesn’t mean making it easier to play but so far that seems to be the path it’s been taken in.

^^^^^^

I don’t mind builds with AI, but currently they’re just too much. Too much in the sense that they do too much even without interaction from the player, and too much in the sense of visual clutter.

The prior is the more important problem, however. It’s extremely discouraging when you (as someone with a lot of hours invested into PvP and with a lot of experience) kill an minion necro or ranger who is fairly new to the game, and has almost no experience, and you find yourself nearly dead; not only because some builds are WAY too rewarding for the skill (or lack thereof; this doesn’t just apply to AI reliant builds) it takes to play them, but because while you were fighting you took 7-10k damage just from their pets autoattacking you.

AI either needs to be made more active with a reduction to passive benefits, or it needs to be nerfed to the point where it’s distinguishably subpar in comparison to non-AI builds, but still easy to play.

So.. It’s impossible to get paid/free tokens for skins now? I think that this was a step in the right direction, BUT now we just lost access to tournament only skins..

1. Balance Philosophy
2. Rewards
3. Leaderboards

I’ve seen Powerrr on his Necro and Ele twice in the past week or two.

VIVorcha.7853:

Here’s what they put in for the benefit of Turret engineers:

“Metal Plating: Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 33%.”

They’ve developed a cruel sense of humor. It’s not just elementalists.

Good. Specs that involve more AI should be worse than those that don’t, for the sake of the health of the game. In many cases this doesn’t hold true, but as for Engineer it does, and that’s not a bad thing.

Because they’re most fun and/or challenging to me.

Daishi.6027:

I’d say over all other than phant they are pretty balanced since you can outplay them as almost any class 1v1, but having so many clones in such a cluster of pixels can make the whole thing seem daunting. But atleast the class isn’t auto attack to win while being tanky, with evade spam and instant full rezes.

I still find staff + offhand torch, prismatic understanding + debilitating dissipation condi mesmers running decoy and blink with mass invis to be extremely hard to kill on burst Ele regardless of the variant of the build. Thief as well, although shortbow alleviates the trouble a bit. The build seems to be ridiculously strong in general when encountered 1v1, but as someone mentioned earlier in the thread; they don’t do a very good job of holding point and don’t contribute as much to teamfights as some other builds do.

Spelling B Champ.3264:

-Do you honestly like where the meta is/has been for forever? Do you honestly think passive low risk/high reward AI driven gameplay is really the way to go for an “e-sport?”

That’s the one question I’d love to hear the answer for. Colin mentioned that they were working on making the PvP scene more casual friendly, yet at the same time he stated that they are attempting to continue to grow the competitive scene. In state of things, these two goals seem contradictory.

GW2 sPvP has been losing its most competitive and top tier players because of the fact that the PvP is too casual friendly at this point. There are some builds and matchups in which a complete new player can literally press random buttons on his skillbar and succeed or come close to succeeding in being more effective than, or beating, a rather seasoned player with hundreds or thousands of hours invested into the game.

Unfortunately the solution to this problem isn’t very simple as the problem itself isn’t very simple. The facts are, though, that it’s the main problem contributing to the death of the competitive scene, and that saying, “Improving the game and experience for the core base in general to make it more fun for more casual or casual-competitive gamers to play PvP,” is not indicative of progress in the right direction. Seeing those words is personally quite discouraging and hope-crushing as someone who would enjoy seeing sPvP truly become something solid on the competitive level.

Colin, what is your/aNet’s vision of what you want sPvP to be? At this point you seem to be trying to push the game to become competitive while it’s still in a state that’s too casual-friendly to do so, and without making much progress (in regards to balance) that push it to be more competitive.

I’m not trying to downsize your numerous achievements and additions to PvP over the past year, as I’m sure the community appreciates them, but it seems that the general state of dismay and disappointment is a result of confusion that could be resolved with an answer to this perseverant issue.

evilapprentice.6379:

Zeon.8239:

S/D thieves complain, saying that larcenous strike changing from two boon steals to one breaks the entire weaponset. Meanwhile, the glaring problem with the ability to spam evades goes pitifully unanswered.

You appear to be commenting on a spec that fell out of favor months ago. Please update your biases before trying again.

Just because it fell out of “favor” doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, or isn’t an issue.

The patches for Elementalists focus on conjures/staff and nothing else, still leaving us in practically the same state we’re in now, except with nerfs to Evasive Arcana.

The complaints about Elementalists’ Fire traitline are unresolved, whereas aNet made it a point in patch notes make us aware that the changes to Necros’ Blood traitline were a response to their complaints.

Mesmers get mantra buffs, but they still go widely unused.

Meanwhile, everything else gets buffs that matter.

Shadow trap gets nerfed but still remains one of the most useful (and fun) utility skills in the game.

S/D thieves complain, saying that larcenous strike changing from two boon steals to one breaks the entire weaponset. Meanwhile, the glaring problem with the ability to spam evades goes pitifully unanswered.

Chokolata.1870:

its perfectly fine though to have mobility, sustain and kill people in 2 seconds as an Ele , no ?

Please tell us more about burst eles’ sustain.

Best burst build for “fun”?

Probably 30/30/10/0/0. Lava tomb, internal fire and persisting flames; bolt to the heart, air training and fresh air (tempest defense if not scepter), and stone splinters. Berserker amulet/jewel with scholar runes.

Enjoy the instagibs.